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So, I've decided that I want to make a concerted effort to reducing our mortgage so that we finish our term well before the initial end date of April 2041. Unfortunately, I haven't quite set a fixed date in mind I just know that I want to pay it off early.

A bit of backstory for you all. My husband and I bought our first home together in April 2011. We initially had a mortgage for £108K. 2 years later when our fixed term came to an end we wanted to free up some money so that we could do some renovations on the house - extend the bathroom and convert the garage. We had the house revalued as £155K which allowed us to remortgage for £116K, giving us £10K for the renovations.

Life tootled on and I fixed out mortgage again at the end of the 2 year fixed period in April 2015 for 5 years. Annoyingly, we were just over the 75% LTV ratio when I remortgaged and within a few months we had dropped below it and could have got a cheaper rate and saved ourselves about £100 a month. But, I didn't know this at the time and hindsight is 20/20.

After our wedding last year DH's dad came along one day out of the blue and said he wanted to give DH an advance on his inheritance. Well, not just an advance but his actual inheritance early. To the tune of £100K!! This actually rendered me speechless. Not something that happens very often.
As our mortgage was over this amount we decided not to put it all down onto the mortgage. Whether this was the right or wrong thing to do...well, people will have their own opinions. We decided to pay off our debts and put £10K down as a lump sum on the mortgage and invest/save the rest.
Oh and we both took £1000 each to do what we wish with. He spent his on a titanium frame and built a new road bike. I invested some of mine in Funding Circle, bought a new iPhone after buying myself out of my mobile contract and have the rest in a savings account. This is why I'm in charge of the household finances

Anyway....we now have a mortgage below £100K and when the statement came through at the end of December I was so excited! This seemed to me like a massive milestone and it got me thinking.
How much more could I do? How much money could I get out of my husband each month without him complaining too much? Where can I squeeze some money and put it towards the mortgage and bring it down? The fact that we shaved off nearly 5 years on the length of the term really excited me. How much more could I take off if we made regular over-payments?
Unfortunately we can only make lump-sum over-payments of £500+ on our mortgage. So, my plan is to save the money up and make either one or two lump-sum payments each year. This year I want to pay a minimum of £1,000 extra.

I've also just realised that this post is loooong and quite possibly very boring to you all. So, for now I will leave it at this and keep updating as I go along. Also, my cat has decided to sit on my arm as I'm typing and this isn't particularly conducive to typing.
So, hopefully I'll get a few followers on this journey of mine. If not, at least I've got somewhere for me to put my random and not-so-random ramblings.

So after a week my £500 overpayment has been applied to my mortgage. A week! What a joke. Had a moan on the Santander Facebook page and they asked for more details so are now treating it as a proper complaint I may have accused them of keeping hold of my money in order to earn interest off of it for themselves

In other news I have my flu jab at 9am tomorrow morning. Oh joy of joys! But I get it early and choose to pay for it because I actually got the flu 2 years ago and it was the worst thing ever. I understand how people die from the flu! Annoyingly I'd had the flu jab 13 days before I became ill but my body hadn't had enough time to create the antibodies (or I caught a different strain) so now I make sure I get it as soon as I can!! But I still don't like being jabbed with a needle

So Santander took me seriously and handled my little moan as a proper complaint and everything. Got a resolution letter seeing as I don't answer my mobile phone to numbers I don't know (I get A LOT of spam) saying that even though it can take 5-7 working days to apply the money to my account they work the interest out from the day the payment leaves me bank account so it's not to my detriment. If they'd just flipping well say that somewhere either online or on the phone when I make the payments I wouldn't mind and I wouldn't have complained. Anyway I got a free £25 out of it so I'm happy! Wasn't even a proper complaint. I was just having a whinge on FB but whatever. Free money is free money!!

Great news that you got a little extra from them! I'm the same with my mobile and don't tend to answer unknown numbers, I did read that one of the networks is putting in place something to stop the spammy calls even getting to your phone. I hope they will all follow suit.

So hubby and I are off on our holibobs tomorrow - 4 night jaunt to Madrid but I just wanted to let you know that when we get back our little family will be expanding!! We've adopted 2 more cats!

Okay so this is boy cat, currently called Ben

and he has a sister, currently called Julie who had an operation on her hernia last Friday and was spayed at the same time, hence why she's rocking the lampshade look.

Save

We're hoping to be able to pick them up next Saturday but the vet wants to see girl cat on Wednesday because her hernia is still a bit pokey outey and he may have to re-repair it but fingers crossed even if he does we should be able to bring them home over the weekend!

Hi mrsp - hope you had a lovely holiday?
Gorgeous cats!!!!! So happy for you. They are really cute. I know that one of mine burst her stitches after she was neutered (she didn't like the head cone and climbed up every pair of curtains in a frenzy until it was off...probably then that she did it!) She was fine after a little op...didn't bother with the cone again, just tried to watch her with the stiches as much as possible.

Great news about the bonus £25 too...better in your pocket (well mortgage, but you know what I mean)

Had a lovely time in Madrid, weather was beautiful and got to visit the Estadio Bernabeu, which was amazing!! Flight home was delayed by 5 hours so we landed at about 01:45 and didnt get home til 3am!! I've just finished filling in my compensation form so hopefully we'll have EUR 500 headed our way soon. I made a mistake at the airport when i googled the distance between Madrid and Birmingham and it gave me the driving distance not the flying distance so for the last 48hours I've been thinking we'd be getting EUR 800 instead. Oops. Oh well, its all money - however this will probably go on christmas not the mortgage.

Rang up about the itty bitty kitty committee yesterday. Julie's surgery went okay but because she had to have it redone they want to make sure she's okay for another few days, so we're to call back on Tuesday and hopefully we can pick them up on Wednesday. I was actually a bit relieved because I was just so tired yesterday I really didn't want to drive out past Shrewsbury and back and also it gives our current kitties the chance to get used to us being in house again.

We have the kitties and we can confirm that they're called Renault and Clio. Clio needs her stitches out next Wednesday and she's booked in with our vet in town. She also has a slightly watery right eye, so it's possible she might be coming down with a bit of cat flu but we were happy to bring her home anyway and we'll keep an eye on it and if it develops into something more we'll take her the vets for any antibiotics or whatever. So far it's clear so hopefully nothing will come of it.
They're all causing minor mayhem tucked up in my office upstairs. I'm trying very hard to keep hubby on the straight and narrow and allow for a gradual introduction to the home, rather than his usual way which is to let the cats out and see what happens!! I don't want to stress out the existing cats too much whereas hubby thinks it's just a case of leg nature take its course, it'll all be alright in the end!" *sigh*
Photos to follow when I get a chance xx

On the phone to Severn Trent water. Got my bill via email this morning and was thrilled to find out that my monthly direct debit would be going down again to £1.89!! Had a look at the actual bill and the actual meter readings from 6 months ago was 306, and today it was 306!
Just checked the meter and indeed it's stuck on 306 so it looks as if I need a new meter. I'm being very responsible and asking for my monthly payments to go back up so I don't end up with a build of arrears.
Negotiated to pay £20 a month taking into account previous usage history and the £103 credit we have. I feel like a very responsible adult right now

Well I work on an energy project at Citizens Advice so I've seen what happens if issues like this aren't identified quickly, or are identified but ignored by the consumer thinking no-one will notice. It usually ends up with a rather convoluted bill and certain backbilling rules need to be applied, which the provider won't do upfront, only after we get involved. Anyway.
Something I noticed is that Severn Trent didn't say anything about the pretty much free water that I've had for almost a full year. We've used 12 units in the last 12 months, none in the last 6 so all we've paid for is service charges, ground water and sewerage. They didn't mention anything about paying extra for what we've consumed in the last 6 months but haven't been billed for. From what I've heard though is that STWater are pretty happy to just write things off i.e. trust fund applications and the big difference scheme they run rather than chase for the money. Maybe because they have the monopoly on the market in our region? I'm not complaining anyway

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